Abstract The J-region asymptotic giant branch (JAGB) method is a new standard candle that based on the stable intrinsic J -band magnitude of color-selected carbon stars, and has precision comparable to other primary distance indicators such as Cepheids TRGB. We further test accuracy JAGB in Local Group galaxy M33. M33's moderate inclination, low metallicity, nearby proximity make it an ideal la...

DIRECT is a project to obtain directly the distances to two Local Group galaxies, M31 and M33, which occupy a crucial position near the bottom of the cosmological distance ladder. As the first step of the DIRECT project we have searched for detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) and new Cepheids in the M31 and M33 galaxies with 1m-class telescopes. In this eighth paper we present a catalog of varia...

The autocorrelation function provides an objective test for the existence of special scales in the hierarchical clustering of young stars. We apply this measure to single-star photometry for the brightest main sequence stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), M33, and M31, using data from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey and the Massey Local Group Sur...

The frequency–period distribution and other properties of Cepheids in IC 1613 are discussed and compared with those of stars in our Galaxy (Milky Way), LMC, SMC, M31 and M33. Taking into account the observational limitations and related incompleteness, it is concluded that the frequency–period distribution of Cepheids in IC 1613 is similar to that of SMC; we suspect that a much larger number of...

ABSTRACT We use the APOSTLE Local Group (LG) cosmological hydrosimulations to examine properties of ‘backsplash’ galaxies, i.e. dwarfs that were within virial boundaries Milky Way (MW) or M31 in past, but are today outside their radius (r200). More than half all between $1\text{ and }2\, r_{200}$ each primary backsplash. distant backsplash systems, those reaching distances well beyond $2\, r_{2...

Using the theoretical stellar population synthesis models of BC96, Kong et al. (2003) showed that some BATC colors and color indices could be used to disentangle the age and metallicity effect. They found that there is a very good relation between the flux ratio of L8510/L9170 and the metallicity for stellar populations older than 1 Gyr. In this paper, based on the Kong et al. results and on th...

Amajor uncertainty in the dynamical history of the local group of galaxies originates from the unknown transverse speed of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) relative to the Milky Way. We show that the recent VLBA measurement of the proper motion of Andromeda’s satellite, M33, severely constrains the possible values of M31’s proper motion. The condition that M33’s stellar disk will not be tidally disru...

We undertook a long term project, DIRECT, to obtain the direct distances to two important galaxies in the cosmological distance ladder – M31 and M33, using detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) and Cepheids. While rare and difficult to detect, detached eclipsing binaries provide us with the potential to determine these distances with an accuracy better than 5%. The massive photometry obtained in o...